Mora Ventures 3.0: Launching and Growing Your Startup

Back once again for a third round, Mora Ventures, this time with the suffix 3.0 took place in the 13th of March 2018 at the CSE Seminar Room at the University of Moratuwa. What is Mora Ventures 3.0? Well, we covered that here. Walking into the room, we were immediately hit by not only the cool breeze of the air conditioning, but also the fact that this was indeed a very important event.

Starting things off at Mora Ventures 3.0

Kicking off with the National Anthem, we had Heminda Jayaweera, IFS endowed Senior Fellow in Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Co-Founder at Venture Frontier Lanka deliver the opening speech at Mora Ventures 3.0. He thanked everyone for taking time out of their busy schedules to attend Mora Ventures 3.0.

Heminda went on to congratulate the entrepreneurship society of the University of Moratuwa. Despite the prevailing issues in the university systems in Sri Lanka, he applauded the organizers for keeping the event. He gave a brief history about Mora Ventures, which initially kicked off in 2017. Wishing all the teams the best of luck, Heminda’s speech came to and end.

Pubudu Liyanage, HR Director of IFS was up on stage to talk about his experience with Mora Ventures 3.0. He spoke about his past experiences with Mora Ventures. Pubudu went on to speak about the success of the programme and also thanked the University for inviting IFS to be a part of Mora Ventures.

Pubudu Liyanage addressing the audience at Mora Ventures 3.0

Pubudu’s speech was followed by a speech by Prof. Kapila Perera, the Chief guest for Mora Ventures 3.0. He went on to explain the steps that the Entrepreneurship society has taken to spearhead initiatives such as Mora Ventures.

It was time for the presentations of Mora Ventures 3.0.

Each team would have 7 minutes to make their product pitch and demonstration. A further 5 minutes would be allocated for a Q&A session from the judges. The teams were urged to stick to the time limit as their presentations would be affected in case they went over time limit. The teams would also be judged based on their team diversity, business feasibility, innovation, and going to market plan.

Bright Panda wans to help students choose the correct path

This is a platform that guides students in choosing the correct career path according to their strengths and interests. The team has identified that there exists a 35% drop out rate from public universities. This is because students are not happy with the career path that they have chosen or they are following the wrong degree programme.

Bright Panda being pitched

They plan to focus on 400,000 A/L students. In terms of income, Bright Panda would gain revenue via ad banners, student referral systems etc. They would also carry out career guidance seminars as well. They also plan to expand Bright Panda to Nepal, Bangladesh and a few other countries as well.

Mora Squad wants you to control your home appliances

Their product Qtie is a single Android application and a IOT device that you can use to control all devices in your house. Simply plug your electrical dumb appliance into a Qtie adapter and transform it to a smart device that can be controlled from your smartphone. They target smartphone users ages from 18-50.

Mora Squad presenting Qtie at Mora Ventures 3.0

In their surveys, the team found that almost everyone uses smartphones and that they also were interested in using these devices. They aim to earn revenue by selling hardware, in app purchases for mobile app features and sale of extra components such as sensors.

Creating a better life for livestock farmers with FarmLi

Presented by Echo Innovators, a Nepalese startup, FarmLi aims to bring livestock farming, machine learning, cloud computing, IoT and AI together to provide a better life for livestock, resulting in a better future for farmers. This is especially important for a country such as Nepal where livestock plays an ipirtant part in the countries’ ecosystem.

Echo Innovators pitching FarmLi

FarmLi consists of a neck band which is connected to a mobile application. The device is non-invasive, water proof and has a battery life of 3-5 months. The application would continuously monitor the livestock’s temperature, behavior and activity readings, providing real time data. The system will also monitor the animals for disease symptoms and pregnancies as well. They use a mixture of MS Azure, ML Studio and displays everything via a PowerBI dashboard. The company is targeting FarmLi for professional and regular farmers, NGOs and vets as well. You can learn more about them here.

Rational X had quite a rational product for advertising

Called Admob, they call it a dynamic outdoor advertising platform. They plan to make use of unused space into advertising space. So what unused space is this? Well, according to the team, a viable space is on the sides of tuks. Since tuks are seen almost everywhere across the country, they make the perfect platform for brands to advertise their products.

Rational-X pitching Admob

The advertising would also be beneficial for tuk drivers themselves as they would actually check up on what products are being advertised and they learn from it as well. Once a company signs on with them, they can see where the tuk has gone and measure sales and other factors that result from the campaign. Their website and product portfolio is available here.

Recycle a bottle and get a mobile reload by !dea factory.

They aim to recycle plastic bottles and earn a profit from doing so as well. How? Well, their product is a bottle collecting machine. The device would use surface mapping and a number of other technologies to make sure that the bottles collected are in a usable condition with no physical damage.

!dea Factory presenting Price Ur Plastic

All you have to do is to walk up to the device and enter in your mobile phone number. Insert the bottles you have and let the machine scan them. If the bottle is accepted, you will receive a credit reload to the number you have entered. This encourages people to recycle plastic bottles. Bottles collected by the device will then be collected by recyclers who can reuse them. They aim to have version 2.0 which would be solar powered. In addition, it would also collect yogurt cups, metal cans and glass bottles as well.

SwimTuor wants to make you a better swimmer

Their product takes the form of a swim suit that has a number of sensors that are used to inspect and analyze a swimmers’ performances. There would also be a standalone mobile application that would help users analyze a 3D model and measure parameters such as stroke count, stroke rate, kick count, kick rate, breath pattern, stroke length, average velocity and joint angular kinematics.

SwimTuor being presented

The details recorded are uploaded to the cloud so trainers can measure their students’ performance and see how they can be improved. They plan to have a consumer application, a practitioner application and a professional application that are priced at LKR 12,000, LKR 140,000, and LKR 450,000 respectively. The Professional application has all the bells and whistles including a database of so that trainers and coaches can compare stats.

Saving your electricity once again with Team Loggers and PLUGe

Making a reappearance since we last saw them at the semifinal round of CodeSprint 3.0, PLUGe is an attachment to a 13Amp wall socket that can convert it into a smart device. This enables you to turn the device off from the plug itself, saving your electricity.

Loggers presenting PLUGe

The device makes use of machine learning to recognize normal usage patterns of a device. Rather than showing results in a power output, it would show reports in terms of money spent or saved by switching off the device.

The last team for the day was SA2 Solutions

Making a name for providing robotic solutions to industrial requirements, SA2 Solutions presented Camcar. The problem they had identified was that certain scenes in a movie could have used a drone to get more intense angles. As such, they present Camcar. This is a remote control miniature vehicle with a camera attached. Think of it as a device used to bridge the gap between a dolly car and a drone.

SA2 Solutions presenting Camcar

Camcar would have a GPS tracker as well so that you can send it out to hard to reach areas and capture footage.The primary target for Camcar would be wildlife photographers and professional cameramen. For future improvements, the team plans to add an adjustable platform for the camera so that it can capture footage on different planes or levels as well.

That was the end of presentations at Mora Ventures 3.0

That was followed by the handing out of certificates of participation to all teams who took part. Next up was a speech by the winners of Mora Ventures 2.0, Team Hybriteq. They spoke about their experiences with Mora Ventures and encouraged all teams, regardless of winning or not, to always work hard and push themselves to reach their goals.

A word from the judges

All of the judges agreed that the presentations were indeed good. Their feedback covered more or less the same thing: always strive for perfection, always carry out market validation. They also pointed out that cash flow is an important and often underestimated element to a startup. Their last point was to go thinking beyond the borders than you would usually think.

Announcing the Winners of Mora Ventures 3.0

2nd Runner Up – Team !dea Factory and Price Ur Plastic

1st Runner Up – Team MoraSquad and Qtie

Winner – Team Echo Innovators and FarmLi

With the vote of thanks delivered by Sudeera Madushanka, Mora Ventures 3.0 came to an end .